The National Institutes of Health announced a $9 billion spending cut in response to a new mandate from the Trump administration. (Alamy/Getty Images)
One of the grants cut included nearly $1 million to scientists at the University of Maryland-Baltimore for a research project titled, "Assessing intersectional multilevel and multidimensional structural racism for English- and Spanish-speaking populations in the US." The project included work to create an "intersectional, multilevel, and multidimensional Structural Racism Measure" in order to "eliminate health disparities and discrimination" for racial minorities.
"There is an urgent public health need to collect valid and reliable data on structural racism before effective interventions to reduce structural racism can be designed," the project's description stated.
Multiple projects studying transgender medical treatments in mice were also among those cut. One of those grants provided close to $1 million to Emory University researchers to study how transgender hormone treatments impact the skeletal maturation of mice, titled, "Microbiome mediated effects of gender affirming hormone therapy in mice." Another project worth roughly $50,000 worked to understand "how chromosomal makeup and cross-sex hormone administration" impacts wound healing in mice.
A separate research project that did not use mice got nearly $1 million "to study possible genomic associations with gender identity."
A scientist demonstrates pipetting viscous genomic DNA at the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center in Rockville, Maryland, on April 13, 2023. (Photo by Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The administration's actions targeting NIH research have generated widespread backlash. Earlier this month, Trump's pick to be the next NIH director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, was peppered with questions from Democrats during his confirmation hearing over whether he would step in to prevent the president from slashing what they deemed critically important research projects.
Bhattacharya would not explicitly say he disagreed with the cuts, or that, if confirmed, he would step in to stop them. Rather, he said he would "follow the law," while also investigating the impact of the cuts and ensuring every NIH researcher doing work that advances the health outcomes of Americans has the resources necessary to do their work.
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Bhattacharya also laid out what he called a new, decentralized vision for future research at NIH that he said will be aimed at embracing dissenting ideas and transparency, while focusing on research topics that have the best chance at directly benefiting the health outcomes of Americans. Bhattacharya said that he wants to rid the agency's research portfolio of other "frivolous" efforts that he says do little to directly benefit health outcomes.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hhs-slashes-over-350-million-grant-funding-gender-ideology-dei-research-projects